Growing up in a modest two-story home in Atchison, Kansas, young Amelia and her sister shared a bedroom that looks out onto a large sugar maple. Undoubtedly Earhart viewed the tree many times and watched the unusual propeller-like seeds spinning playfully to the ground in the fall. Amelia Earhart was an American aviation pioneer and author. She was the first female aviator to fly solo across the Atlantic Ocean! She received the U.S. Distinguished Flying Cross for this record. She set many other records, wrote best-selling books about her flying experiences, and was instrumental in forming The Ninety-Nines, an organization for female pilots. In 1937, while trying to circumnavigate the globe in a Lockheed Model 10 Electra, Earhart disappeared over the central Pacific Ocean near Howland Island. Fascination with her life, career, and disappearance continues to this day. Her childhood home is now the Amelia Earhart Birthplace Museum and home to the sugar maple and dogwood from which American Heritage Trees collected seeds.
